In-flight entertainment (IFE) systems are deployed onboard aircraft to provide entertainment for passengers in a passenger cabin. IFE systems typically provide passengers with television, movies, games, audio entertainment programming, and other content.
IFE systems typically provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI) on an in-seat Video Display Unit (VDU) that can include an interactive touch selection interface. The GUI includes graphical elements that can include buttons, text, icons, and images. A user can touch select a displayed graphical element to initiate an action or navigate to another layer of graphical elements associated with the selected graphical element.
Designers invest significant time and effort into producing a GUI that is both intuitive and efficient for a typical passenger to use. Once the layout of graphical elements and the interconnect of graphical elements on different hierarchical layers is selected, the GUI is programmatically implemented to provide a same interface on all VDUs within an aircraft and across all aircraft using that type of VDU.
Passenger satisfaction with a flight experience and, ultimately, with an airline can be significantly impacted by the assumptions made by the designers during the layout and configuration design for the GUI of VDUs for an IFE system.